Mind Astir

It was not its sudden appearance that she found the most suspicious. No. It was the name that was written on the box, which otherwise was quite bare, lacking in the usual stamps, stickers, and obscure signs, maybe even the occasional QR code (and this lack was particularly glaring in comparison to all those other packages that she hoarded throughout the week). But even the absence of a sender’s address did not startle her as radically as that name did. Elle N. There was no last name, no Nichols, just these two words (or, perhaps, a word and a half would be more accurate to say?) and designating the addressee in such way would be perceived as overly familiar by all of us, no doubt, as though a neighbour dropped something off on our doorstep in a hurry, but for Elle, it had the added value of a pressing nostalgia. Elle N. That’s what they used to call her in high school, solely for the reason of it sounding like Ellen, which supposedly made them feel quirky to the point of the pronunciation of Elle’s name being habitually followed by a (totally unnecessary) high-pitched giggle pretending to be wholly irrepressible. But she was no longer in contact with any of those people from the past which one day seemed so distant and another so close she could reach her hand out and caress it gently. Still, she did not, not for a moment, doubt that meeting some of them on the street would result in precisely the recreation of those regular hallway moments, because some people simply live in the past like that. Whether she fell into that category she’s never been able to ascertain conclusively. 

Whether she fell into that category or not (and she probably did), she certainly appeared to be stuck in the past of that very morning. The bell rang around 9am (or was it 10? Time around her has seemingly been changing its course at will) and before she managed to gather herself (no matter how much she tried, she was at the point of working from home where differentiating between work and home became increasingly difficult and maybe, just maybe, she was sat in front of her computer wrapped in a long blanket reaching to her ankles when she stood up) and open the door, there was nobody standing there apart from that package that’s been occupying her mind for hours now. 

You may think it silly that she didn’t open it and instead solely stared at it, perched on top of a kitchen chair, a cup of tea rapidly gone cold in her hands, the blurry reflection of her tired face dancing on the surface of the spotless kitchen counter, but the whole thing was a bit suspicious, you surely must admit. Naturally, at first, she thought she may have ordered something she simply forgot about (all that digital working, digital shopping, digital living did a number on her mind and forgetting something like that was not completely implausible) but no, that was not it, she even checked her e-mail for receipts. Her birthday was not for a few weeks still, so that presumably was not it either (and who’d send her something anyway?). The possibility of the package being delivered to a wrong address was also off the table (the address together with the familiar version of her name ticked off that desperate suggestion of her brain as irrelevant) and she gradually had to come to terms with the fact that the origin of the package she would never figure out and resort to guessing as to what actually was hidden inside of it. 

See, it was not for fear that she postponed cutting the box open and having the situation satisfactorily dealt with, which would leave her free to return to her graphs and tables (what’s the worst thing that could happen, what’s there to be afraid of? she thought with a quietly mocking snicker, it’s not like there’s going to be a snake, or a human body, or a threatening letter, this is not a movie, this is my life and things like that don’t happen in life, at least not in the life that I myself know); rather, it was for the prolonged arousal of curiosity that the lack of knowing tickled and brought to life. Lately, her mind’s been feeling clumsy, cranky, unexercised, running in circles of an uninterestingly anxious routine. But this? This was something else, this was exciting, and if it also betrayed that nobody had surprised her in quite some time (she would rather not specify just how protracted that time was), that she was no longer used to receiving gifts or witnessing random acts of kindness, she was willing to push that thought to the back of her mind and focus on the fact that what could be in the box were quad skates, brand new, light blue perhaps, because that would go well with her coat – it would go well with those pants she didn’t know whether to allow herself to buy. If she had quad skates, she would maybe even be motivated enough to go out more although it was getting cold and there hung the possibility of a snowy December in the shadowy skies above the world. She might go see whether the river already got frozen over and whether the pair of old swans was still loitering near the shore, she might go get some hot chocolate on the way, count the Christmas lights in the windows around the block. Maybe she would even rediscover the delight movement used to bring into her bones when she was a kid, climbing trees and running in long, uncut grass, enjoying the lively itch on her skin afterwards. 

Maybe, though, there could be a notepad, leatherbound and firm, firm enough to hold her thoughts, those thoughts that she’s been afraid of for those long, isolated months and so let them chase her for much longer than necessary, when perhaps all that needed to be done was let them settle on the paper. Since she’s started working so much with numbers, words, words of emotions and feelings in particular, words of mundanity (especially that mundanity which does not relate to sales) have turned foreign and hesitant on her tongue and so have parts of her reality turned distant, disconnected, as though the omission of language led to omission of parts of her life. But maybe she could make a point of tasting a word here and there, sipping on a bittersweet sentence or even two and since she’s on the point of tasting what if there’s an ice-cream maker in that box, wouldn’t that be something? Although maybe in that case the box would have to be a tad bit heavier, but never mind that, let her have it, because one thing you need to know about Elle is that ice-cream was a passion of her mother’s, they used to go ice-cream tasting together wherever they were and Elle enjoyed humouring her, being with her, more than she enjoyed that ice-cream. She even suspected her mother would open up an ice-cream parlour if she only could, and because she couldn’t, stuck in her way of life and in dreaming up the future without pursuing it as she was, she at least made ice-cream at home. Elle’s father still had that old ice-cream maker that was probably good for nothing apart from serving as a memory trigger, which meant that it still was good for something after all. Elle didn’t want such a machine to be in that obscure box because she’s inherited that particular passion, although, in one way or another, ice-cream might have crawled into her DNA somewhere, but mostly because her mother seemed to think that the food was an occasion for connecting people, for getting them together, for relishing in what’s fitting for summer and for little acts of rebellion in winter, for sitting together around the table and sucking cold spoons and licking fingers and wincing at those members of the family who bite into ice-cream and make your brain freeze by proxy. However strange it was that the desire for companionship manifested itself in the wish for an ice-cream maker that Elle surely wouldn’t be able to operate anyway, that’s how her Friday went by. 

In fact, as hours flew by her head and she imagined all those activities the mystery of the box may enable her to pursue (what if there was a camera and she may actually start learning how to take good photos without cropping the important parts out accidentally or messing up the perspective inexplicably and what if she started travelling around a bit once again, surely it’s soon going to be possible anyway; or what if there was book she never heard of that would confront her with a thought reshaping her world in ways unimaginable; or what if there was the dress she otherwise wasn’t brave enough to buy or wear; or what if there was a letter from him – indeed, it did sound a bit like him to make a whole drama out of sending a letter in a box) the kitchen darkened. She couldn’t tell you what time it was when she finally got up to open the package hesitantly, she only knew that her body was as stiff as her mind was astir. At that point, walking toward the box, calculating as to where to start shattering the illusions of her imagination, she realised she no longer cared much for what was actually in it – the striking realisation that she still had desires of her own, the awakening as to what those desires actually were in seeing all those other versions of herself that may be given existence to by something as simple as a small, inconsequential object, that was much more important. 

And it remained still more important even when it occurred to her that the whole thing may have been a prank pulled on her by the neighbours’ gift of a child, cackling all day on her account. Perhaps, she wouldn’t even mind finding the insides of the box completely empty, she decided, and, at last, she reached for the scissors.